Other forms: emancipated, emancipating, emancipates
To emancipate is to set somebody free from bondage or restraint. Emancipate the slaves, emancipated women, emancipate themselves.
The Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 is the best-known use. The Latin is remarkable: it meant releasing a son from the legal power of his father, from the ceremony of taking the hand off him.
1verbemancipateTo set somebody free from bondage or restraint.
“Education helped to emancipate women from lives spent entirely at home.”
emancipate is a freeing.
Latin emancipare meant to release a son from a father's legal power, from ex plus manus, a hand, plus capere, to take.
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)meh₂-
Latin
ēmancipātus — liberated, emancipated
English, today
emancipate
Built from
Latin ēmancipātus (“liberated, emancipated”) + English -ate. Ēmancipātus is the of ēmancipō (“to declare (someone) free and independent of another’s power, emancipate; to give (something) from one’s authority or power into that of another, to alienate, transfer; to cause (oneself or someone) to become another’s slave; to make (someone) subservient”), from ē- (a variant of ex-) + mancipō (“to sell; to transfer”) (from manceps (“owner, possessor; purchaser; etc.”) + -ō). The verb emancipate has set free (“to set free”) and place under control (“(obsolete) to place under one’s control”) which are contradictory. The Latin word ēmancipō had the same senses, and the Oxford English Dictionary notes that according to the Latin grammarian Paulus Festus (' 8th century) this is because both actions were effected by the legal process of mancipation.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA